Conversation, n.: A vocal competition in which the one who is catching his breath is called the listener.
AMBROSE BIERCEOptimism – the doctrine or belief that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly.
More Ambrose Bierce Quotes
-
-
Quotation, n: The act of repeating erroneously the words of another.
AMBROSE BIERCE -
Democracy is four wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.
AMBROSE BIERCE -
Laughter, n. An interior convulsion, producing a distortion of the features and accompanied by inarticulate noises. It is infectious and, though intermittent, incurable.
AMBROSE BIERCE -
Ocean: A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man – who has no gills.
AMBROSE BIERCE -
Scriptures – The sacred books of our holy religion, as distinguished from the false and profane writings on which all other faiths are based.
AMBROSE BIERCE -
MIND, n. A mysterious form of matter secreted by the brain. Its chief activity consists in the endeavour to ascertain its own nature, the futility of the attempt being due to the fact that it has nothing but itself to know itself with.
AMBROSE BIERCE -
Women of genius commonly have masculine faces, figures and manners. In transplanting brains to an alien soil God leaves a little of the original earth clinging to the roots.
AMBROSE BIERCE -
Opposition, n. In politics the party that prevents the government from running amuck by hamstringing it.
AMBROSE BIERCE -
RUMOR, n. A favorite weapon of the assassins of character.
AMBROSE BIERCE -
Philosophy: A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.
AMBROSE BIERCE -
Mad, adj. Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence.
AMBROSE BIERCE -
The partisan strife in which the people of the country are permitted to periodically engage does not tend to the development of ugly traits of character, but merely discloses those that preexist.
AMBROSE BIERCE -
All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusions is called a philosopher.
AMBROSE BIERCE -
Abstainer: a weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure.
AMBROSE BIERCE -
ARMOR, n. The kind of clothing worn by a man whose tailor is a blacksmith.
AMBROSE BIERCE -
They say that hens do cackle loudest when there is nothing vital in the eggs they have laid.
AMBROSE BIERCE -
Dawn: When men of reason go to bed.
AMBROSE BIERCE -
Divorce: a resumption of diplomatic relations and rectification of boundaries.
AMBROSE BIERCE -
Alliance – in international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted in each other’s pockets that they cannot separately plunder a third.
AMBROSE BIERCE -
True, man does not know woman. But neither does woman.
AMBROSE BIERCE -
Future. That period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true and our happiness is assured.
AMBROSE BIERCE -
The only distinction that democracies reward is a high degree of conformity.
AMBROSE BIERCE -
Present, n. That part of eternity dividing the domain of disappointment from the realm of hope.
AMBROSE BIERCE -
Litigation: A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage.
AMBROSE BIERCE -
Pray: To ask the laws of the universe to be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.
AMBROSE BIERCE -
Logic: The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding.
AMBROSE BIERCE